Kobiyashimaru
by blinkblink
Summary: The no-win scenario. How do you choose? SnakexOtacon


He's crawling through a ventilation shaft when Otacon calls

Disclaimer: Don't own MGS or the characters.

Apparently I am cursed to have a ghost line of text at the top of this page.

KOBIYASHIMARU

He's crawling through a ventilation shaft when Otacon calls. He's crawled through miles of it by this time, a goddamn Appalachian Trail of the stuff, and his knees and elbows are aching like hell. 

_What?_ he snarls into the codec, pausing to lie still in his current duct, metal cold even through the insulated skin of his stealth suit. 

_You're going to have to finish the mission without me_, says the engineer, sounding flustered. Snake chalks this down to his nervousness at being on site.

_What the hell does that mean?_ he spits back, shifting in irritation, knocking his funny bone against a join in the shaft. He curses quietly.

_They've found me; I can hear them getting ready to break down the door…_ Otacon's words are quick and run together, before his voice cuts out. 

_Otacon-_ growls Snake, but the techie continues at the same time, in a calmer tone.

_I've wiped the computer; they won't get anything out of it._

Snake is by this time backing up in the vent; after only a few feet he feels an opening under the thin soles of his boots, pushes himself back over it until it is under his chin, and begins to lever the grill out of its place. _Just hold on- I can be there in three minutes_. If he's lucky. If he doesn't run into any guards. The place is swarming with them, an ant hill full of the bastards patrolling with P90s, more of a sting than he or Otacon had counted on, and the reason for his laborious trek through the vent shafts. 

_No, Snake, there's no time. They wipe their files at midnight- you'll never make it if you come back for me. _He falls silent again, and Snake drops out of the duct onto the linoleum floor, swirling even as he's landing to face the direction he needs to be going, eyes adjusting almost instantly to the brighter corridor lights. He's lucky; the hall is empty. For now. 

_Snake, get to the computers,_ Otacon hisses suddenly, shoving his words together to finish in a time limit only he's aware of. _They'll probably just lock me up; you can get me out later. You've got to- dammit_. He falls silent, and a second later the codec line is cut with a quiet beep. Snake pulls out his SOCOM; no time for screwing around with tranqs.

The place is like an anthill in more way that one, full of corridors meeting at odd points and then diverging, some leading off into long hallways, others stopping short almost immediately in dead ends. But Otacon provided a good briefing, managed somehow to hack out the building layout, and Snake has it in his head like a map. He doesn't know where most of the corridors go, but he knows which one will take him to the small storage room his partner was supposed to be hiding in. He also knows which direction will take him to the central computer room, where he is supposed to be heading; it is behind him. 

He threads his way through patrols, partially by luck, partially owing to some sixth sense acquired through years of stealth ops which warns him when not to stick his neck out. He twice misses running into a soldier only by the skin of his teeth, throwing himself into an open room as a man walks by. He has no time for the body-hiding game, no time for firefights. He might already be out of time.

A trip which took him half an hour crawling through metal shafts takes him only slightly more than two minutes on foot, so that he is only beginning to breath heavily from his sprint when he comes around the corner of the short hall that leads to Otacon's would-be hiding place. The door is open, two men in unmarked fatigues and military boots standing outside looking in. His gun taps twice in his hand and the men drop, bloody flowers blooming on the walls behind them. A further man steps out to investigate, and Snake drops him as well, no hesitation, no thought, only a goal. And, buried deep down where it can't harm him, a caged tiger, fear.

He can see, even as he comes to stand next to the body of the third man, that there is a fourth who is raising his gun to point at the man lying face down on the floor next to him, unmoving; his partner. He does not bother to suppress his snarl, has shot the man before he had a chance to look around. 

On the floor, Otacon's arm twitches. And then, in a slow, disconnected series of movements, he rolls over and pulls himself up, gray eyes staring at Snake in a kind of confused incomprehension. 

"Snake?" he asks. Snake opens his mouth to answer, but before he gets the chance the world shakes once, sharply, and then grays out, sound and light and colour draining away into a dark void.

MISSION FAILED flashes across his eyes in bold, white letters. The void is replaced by sensation, not the cool emptiness of standing in the stealth suit, but a warmer more relaxed set of perceptions, sitting in civilian clothes in a padded chair.

Snake snarls and lifts the VR helmet off his head, setting it down carelessly on the folding table next to him. Sitting in a chair behind a larger table to his right, Hal squawks. Snake ignores him.

"What the hell was that?" he sits up, eyes flashing.

"That," says Hal, expression of concern shifting to one of irritation, "was you failing the mission."

"I damn well saved you!" 

"You weren't supposed to save me, you were supposed to finish the mission!" 

"I could still have finished it. You didn't give me the chance," Snake runs a hand through his hair with a sharp, angry movement. 

"This wasn't about completing the mission, it was about choosing which to do."

Snake looks up, face twisted in a scowl. "What the hell do you mean, wasn't about the mission? I spent half a goddamn hour climbing through vents!" He pauses for a split second as Hal's words run through his head again. His anger shifts, grows tighter, darker, and his eyes narrow. "You're saying I chose the wrong one? _I saved your life_. How is that wrong? I should have let you die?" His voice is low and guttural, and full of steel shards.

"I'm not saying you chose the wrong one, I'm saying if you chose me, you'd fail the mission. If this had been real life, who knows what the consequences would have been?" Hal's eyes are hard, mouth set in a thin, straight line.

"So what, I choose one and you die, I choose the other and we lose our chance to stop some tin-pot dictator acquiring sudden nuclear capability and starting World War Three? What the hell kind of choice is that?"

"The no-win scenario," says Otacon, pushing up his glasses. The way in which he says it suggests he's quoting something. 

"Don't give me some shit out of one your shows; this is real life, and you're telling me you think what-"

"It's not 'one of my shows,'" cuts in the engineer scathingly, "it's _Star Trek II_." 

Snake flows out of the chair to tower over Hal's desk, tense and bristling, and slams his hands down on the cheap wooden surface so hard that the laptop sitting there rattles. "I don't give a damn why you think it," he snarls, staring the engineer in the face, watching him struggle to meet his eyes, "the point is, you're telling me the mission comes before your _life_." 

Hal swallows, but when he speaks his voice is steady, edged just slightly with steel enough to defend against Snake's. "The point is," he repeats, "you need to think about it. If it were up to me I- I'd rather die than be responsible for World War Three," he finishes quietly, looking away. He looks back almost immediately, though, gray eyes bright. "Weren't you taught that?"

"I was taught that _I_ was expendable," says the soldier in a quieter, harder tone.

"So what, you are but I'm not?"

"You said it was my choice," Snake stares him straight in the eye, watching with all his fierce intensity.

Hal pauses, then, after a minute, nods slightly. "It is," he says, in a considering tone. "But, Snake-"

"Fine then," growls Snake with finality, and turns sharply to face the door. He pauses, though, a tall straight form in the doorway, but after standing for a second without moving, his shoulders drop down from their high line. "Besides," he says in a lighter tone, "who says I would have failed the mission anyway? There was still plenty of time."

"Five minutes," says the engineer, shutting down his computer and standing, but Snake can hear the hint of a smile in his voice. 

"There you are. There's no such thing as a no-win scenario," he waits for Hal in the doorway, leaning easily against the doorframe, watching the engineer with dark eyes. Hal blinks, surprised.

"Have you seen this movie?"

Snake shrugs. "I may have, in my foolish youth." He pauses. "The one with the bad haircut died in the end."

"Spock," says Hal, and Snake smiles slightly at his exasperation. "He's only a huge cultural icon."

"Whatever," says Snake, reaching out to run a light hand through the engineer's own fly-away hair. "Just means I have to keep a closer eye on you."

"Snake," Hal pauses next to him in the doorway, turns to look at him.

"Forget the bad movies, Hal," he says gruffly, taking a step forward to pin the engineer loosely against the opposite side of the doorframe, one hand resting on his shoulder. 

"We'll make our own decisions. And we'll write our own endings." He stares into Hal's gray eyes, traces the line of his cheekbones with a hard thumb. After a second he pushes forward, pulling the engineer against him with his free hand, and seeks out Hal's mouth with his own. Hal makes a low noise in his throat as the soldier deepens the kiss, tongue sliding into the engineer's mouth, and he stretches it out until it's hard to breathe and even his head is beginning to spin slowly. 

Snake pulls away, eyes running over Hal's flushed face. He tightens his grip and lowers his head to lick at the smooth skin of the engineer's neck, smiling when Hal tilts his head back to allow greater access, engineer humming slightly and wrapping his arms around the soldier. "And," Snake adds quietly, gruffly, words muffled against his partner's skin, "I'll never sacrifice you."


End file.
